


the four realised love languages (and the one that isn’t quite there yet)

by QueerCosette



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Capri Suns, F/M, Friendship/Love, Gift Giving, Ladrien | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Quality Time, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, Words of Affirmation, acts of service, copious references to all my current hyperfixations, mwg valentines fic, physical touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:28:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29783016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueerCosette/pseuds/QueerCosette
Summary: There are many ways to say 'I love you' even if you can't get the words out.Valentine's fic for StrangeRahne, I hope you enjoy it!!
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Plagg/Tikki (Miraculous Ladybug)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 64
Collections: Miraculous Writer's Guild February 2021 Event





	the four realised love languages (and the one that isn’t quite there yet)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [strangerahne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangerahne/gifts).



#  **_Giving Gifts_ **

“Ladybug! LADYBUG!”

Ladybug pauses atop the roof of the charcuterie. She’s on a solo patrol; it’s midday, but there’s been less Hawktivity than usual lately - only one Akuma so far this month - and it’s made both herself and Chat Noir wonder if Hawkmoth is planning something big. They’d come up with the idea of lunchtime patrols - just one of them each day, depending on who can get away when. Luckily, most of the schools in Paris have called a Snow Week due to the heavy flurries draping the city in white every night, so with no school to work around it’s far easier to transform and do a quick run of the rooftops to make sure there are no little black butterflies creeping overhead. But this is the first time she’s been flagged down by a civilian.

“Yes?” she calls down uncertainly, and peers over the edge of the roof. “Oh!” Ladybug leaps down, landing in a clump of snow that sends a small cloud of flakes into the air, drifting back down around her feet. “Adrien Agreste! It’s you!”

Apparently, her brief attempt to give up on any feelings for Adrien Agreste has turned her stuttering into speaking like an AA Milne character whenever she’s confronted with him unexpectedly.

“It’s me,” Adrien smiles, looking charming in that blue woolen scarf that still makes her heart ache. His cheeks are rosy red with cold. “I, um, I just wanted - well, it’s, uh, this weekend - on Sunday, it’s…”

Is Adrien Agreste _stuttering?_ She would believe it if she wasn’t so certain that Adrien Agreste never stutters. What would he have to be nervous about? What’s happening on Sunday? Today’s the 12th, so Sunday will be…

“The fourteenth?” Ladybug quietly interrupts what is rapidly becoming a tangent worthy of her civilian self.

Adrien nods, and she realises that his red cheeks might not be from the cold.

“I wanted to give you this,” he says, not looking at her as he holds out a square box in white wrapping, tied with a neat red bow. Her heart sinks as she recognises her parents’ logo on the paper. They’re chocolate truffles, really nice ones too. “For… for Valentine’s Day.”

Silence. Then Ladybug reaches out towards the box, and Adrien looks up excitedly, as though he can’t quite believe it -

But she pushes it back towards him.

“I’m sorry, Adrien,” Ladybug says quietly, “but I can’t accept it.” It hurts her heart - she’s been hoping that Adrien might notice her on Valentine’s Day for so long, but not like this. “You know Ladybug can’t have any ties to civilians - especially romantic ones. If Hawkmoth found out, he would use you to get to me.”

Adrien looks crushed for the briefest of moments, before holding the box towards her again. “You should take them anyway,” he says, an obstinate look coming over his ridiculously pretty face.

“I can’t accept a Valentine -”

“What if it’s not a Valentine?” he insists. “What if it’s a thank you to the heroine of Paris?” She still looks unsure, but he plows on, “You saved my father from Hawkmoth two weeks ago, Ladybug. If we weren’t indebted to you before, we are now.”

In spite of herself, a small smile works its way onto her face. “I… suppose I can’t refuse a thank you present,” she agrees. “But if it’s alright with you, can I share them with Chat Noir?”

Adrien beams.

* * *

#  **_Acts of Service_ **

Alya groans as Ella, Etta and Chris’s joyful screams of “Akuma Tag!” fill her head. Normally she’d happily play along, but she simply has too much to do today.

**_Alya’s To Do List_ **

  * _Babysit_


  * _Write essay on the major themes of **A Streetcar Named Desire** for Ms Bustier, to be emailed in on Monday_


  * _Edit the latest footage of Ladybug into a blog-worthy video_


  * _Organise the Valentine’s Evening hangout at Marinette’s house (mostly involving sending out invitations and assignments on who would bring what snacks)_



Not a lot on paper, but Alya, unfortunately, has a bad habit of insisting she can multitask. Not that she can’t, just that she’s usually better at it when the activities in question don’t all require a large amount of focus. It might have made better sense for her to organise the Valentine’s Evening hangout while babysitting, then save the essay for Saturday and edit the video on Sunday, but Sunday was Valentine’s Day, and Alya already had her work cut out for her spending the morning compiling her best Ladynoir footage for a video, and in the afternoon she would be hanging out with Nino and it would be rude to work on the video then, and in the evening she would be at Marinette’s and again, it would be rude. So it fell to her to finish the video on Saturday, but she wouldn’t be able to do the essay unless the video was somewhat completed - so taking it in turns with them made sense. But taking it in turns meant she’d need more leeway, so she’d have to start them today - when she was meant to be dealing with RSVPs for the hangout. And she couldn’t palm that off on someone else because it hadn’t exactly been dumped on her - she’d excitedly volunteered, knowing that these simple organising skills may pay off in the future when she was a famous journalist. And the babysitting was non-negotiable.

So here she is, doing everything at once.

Or rather, trying to.

Another yell of “TAG! YOU’RE THE AKUMA!” echoes through the Césaires’ apartment, making Alya slam her head onto her desk. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the kids were playing _quietly,_ but with no one entertaining them (since Alya was busy and Nino was on a snack run) they’ve apparently decided going completely feral is the next best option.

The sound of a chair screeching along the floor has Alya forcing herself not to scream curses at the top of her lungs.

There’s a jangle of keys and a slam, and at last there comes the welcome sound of Nino re-entering the apartment.

“Who wants a Capri Sun!” he calls. There's a chorus of excited chattering, some rustling packaging, and then, at long last, sweet, sweet silence.

Alya lets out a relieved sigh as Nino pokes his head into her room. “You doin’ OK there, Als?”

Alya lets out a groan. “Frazzled.” She makes an exploding motion next to her head. “Brain… pufffffff.”

“Is it the RSVP-ing?” Nino asks. Alya groans again. “Because I may have figured you were stressing over it and come to the rescue.”

“Huh?” Alya turns her head so her left ear is pressed to the desk and she can look at her boyfriend. To her surprise, Nino is grinning.

“I already finished my essay,” he announces. “And I am thus free to be the organiser for all things Valentine’s Evening.”

Alya sits up, blinking. “You’d do that?”

“No big,” Nino shrugs. “I’ve got the time. Anyway, I figure if you write half your essay now, spend Saturday morning working on your video, and then finish the essay on Saturday afternoon, you’ll be able to get through it all without wanting to pull your own hair out.”

Alya really isn’t surprised that Nino is this good at organising; he organises his own DJ gigs all the time. However, she’s never found a reason to swoon over his organisational abilities before.

“I love you so much,” she says with feeling, making Nino’s eyes scrunch up happily the way they do every time she says it. “But the babysitting -”

“Done and done!” Nino tips his cap to her, takes a slurp of a Capri Sun she hadn’t noticed him holding, and vanishes back into the hall of the apartment, taking care to shut her door behind him. “Hey, guys!” she hears him call. “How about we take a break from Akuma Tag and play another game?”

As Alya beams and turns back to her essay, she realises, with the familiar feeling of adoration bubbling up in her chest, that Nino has left her her favourite orange Capri Sun.

* * *

#  **_Quality Time_ **

“Chat Noir!”

The shout comes as he passes through Marinette’s neighbourhood on a run: he stops short and turns in the direction it came from. It is indeed Marinette, kind, sweet, caring Marinette, who is waving a flattish rectangle at him.

“Hey, Marinette!” he beams, hurrying across the roof to step onto her balcony. As he approaches, he realises it’s a DVD case in her hand.

Marinette, to his surprise, seems almost nervous. “Are you busy right now?” she asks.

Chat considers it. He’s really only out here in the snow on a Saturday night because since his mother left his father always gets particularly touchy around Valentine’s Day (the Agreste family have long been famed for their Valentine’s celebrations) and Adrien doesn’t feel like dealing with it. It really was a choice between freezing his intimate parts off in a snowstorm or risk being a target when his father’s grief moved on from whisky to throwing projectiles ( _artistes_ are temperamental sometimes, Adrien excuses it to himself). Snowstorm won out. Barely.

“No,” he says firmly. “I’m not busy right now, did you have something you wanted to talk about?”

Marinette’s cheeks are delightfully pink against the backdrop of black and white.

“Not… exactly,” she said. She still sounded nervous. He smiles encouragingly.

“Well, then, what did you have in mind?”

Marinette takes a deep breath.

“OkaysomycousinloanedmethisdocumentarythatshereallylikedBUTshesaiditmadehercryandIcrymoreeasilythanshedoessoI’mreallynervousaboutwatchingitaloneandIwonderedifyouwouldwanttowatchitwithmeIhavecaramelhotchocolateandapplepiewithcustardorwithoutifyoudon’tlikecustardbutIREALLYdon’twanttobealoneifIstartcrying-”

“Whoa, Mari!” Chat Noir gently places his hands on her shoulders. “Can you slow down? My super senses may be the Cat’s Meow, but even I can’t decipher that much information delivered in one breath!”

Marinette nods, and takes a few deep breaths again.

“Okay,” she says, quieter, but with that lovely determined confidence he’s had the pleasure of seeing bloom in her since they first met. “My cousin loaned me a DVD,” she holds up the DVD, “of this super-unknown documentary that last aired in 2006, and she said she really enjoyed it but it made her cry.”

“Yeah?”

Marinette nods, seeming to straighten up as she calms. “I’m not really someone who cries a lot -”

 _And thank Kwami for that,_ Chat Noir thinks. Marinette deserves so much happiness that it makes him hate this new thought of her crying.

“- BUT _she_ cries even _less_ easily than I do. So I’m worried that if it made _her_ upset, it’ll make me _really_ upset.”

“Understandable.”

“Which is why I wanted to invite you in, in the off chance you would be interested in watching it with me.”

Chat Noir is thankful for his mask, because it hides his flattered blush. “You… want _me_ to watch it with you?”

Marinette shrugs, still very pink. “I may need comforting, and you’re a very comforting person to be around. And…” she goes pinker, “I like spending time with you.”

He’s almost certainly as red as a tomato at this point, and it’s not from the cold. “You do?”

Marinette looks away, seemingly embarrassed. “You can say no if you want -”

“No!” he says hurriedly. “I mean, no to saying no, yes to the DVD. I’d… _love_ to spend an evening crying my eyes out over an unknown documentary from 2006 with you,” he says sincerely.

“You would?” Marinette, despite being the one who made the offer, seems genuinely surprised.

“Of course,” he smiles. “I love spending time with you too.”

Marinette positively beams, and beckons him over to the hatch into her room. He follows cheerfully. This is a much better way to spend the night before Valentine’s Day. Only one thing could make this better.

“By the way, did I hear mention of caramel hot chocolate and apple pie with custard?”

* * *

#  **_Physical Touch_ **

_“Plagg!”_ hisses Tikki as the Black Cat Kwami phases through the skylight into Marinette’s room. “You shouldn’t be here! Marinette has friends staying over, they could come up here at any moment and spot you!”

“Relax, Sugarcube,” Plagg says lazily. “They’re all downstairs watching some weepy movie. And in case you’re forgetting, Adrien is one of those friends. He won’t notice I’m gone unless he has to go to the bathroom - and even then he might not. Last I checked, he was bawling into Pigtails’ shoulder because of this dame in pink selling her hair so she could send more money to her kid.”

Tikki makes a face, the face that means she’s conceding but not happy about it, with her eyes narrowed and her lower lip sticking out huffily, the face he loves making her make, and moves along on her little dollhouse-sized sofa so Plagg can join her in watching whatever it is playing on Marinette’s phone screen. The phone is propped up on its side on a little pink stand, and the video appears to be a nature programme. The host is currently standing on the deck of a small boat and excitedly babbling about spotting whales in the bay. Someone’s fetching a yellow kayak in the background.

“What kind of whales?” Plagg drawls, loafing on his side of the sofa.

“Orca,” Tikki says cheerfully. “I must say, I’m happy with the way they came out.”

“What, Livyatan and Megalodon weren’t good enough for you?” Plagg teases.

“Oh, hush, Stinky-sock. The qualities of a good long-term Apex Predator need to be more than just bite force and big teeth,” Tikki defends herself, but Plagg can tell she’s delighted he remembered the names of her old evolutionary experiments. “Making them intelligent enough to hunt in family groups was my greatest achievement at the time, you know that.”

Plagg doesn’t answer, but instead nudges closer so Tikki can curl up against his head and stroke his ears. He purrs loudly to get his point across, that he knows it, even if he doesn’t understand it.

As the God of Destruction, Plagg has never fully understood Tikki’s desire for creation, for evolving her designs to further levels of perfection. His job is to destroy the ones that go wrong, always has been and always will be. But, he reflects, without him, there would be no room for creation. She could not have created the Orca without Plagg removing Livyatan from her path. Creation cannot happen without destruction of what stood in its way, and destruction cannot happen without the creation of things to destroy.

They are two halves of a whole, incomplete without the other, bonded together for all eternity, and Plagg would not have it any other way.

He doesn’t say any of this, but he does curl closer on the little couch, and purrs deeper, and from the way Tikki nuzzles against him, he knows she is delighted he’s here, delighted he is showing her affection in such a tangible yet silent way. Love and understanding do not have to be spoken aloud between them, they know each other so well.

There are some other things, however, that cannot go unsaid.

“He’s going kayaking with ORCA?! Is he MAD?!”

_“Plagg!”_

* * *

#  **_Words of Affirmation_ **

As Ladybug zooms away, she looks back at Adrien with a longing sigh. _One day I’ll be able to tell you how much I love you, Adrien,_ she thinks, _and how good of a friend you are. That’s a promise._

* * *

As Nino begins to organise a far less noisy game of _Devine Qui_ _(Heroes Edition)_ , Alya lets out a lovestruck sigh. _You’re the best, Nino. I love you so much,_ she thinks. _And I’m telling you that as soon as we get a moment alone._

* * *

As Marinette clutches his arm with a frightened gasp, Chat Noir squeezes back, not letting his face betray his own fear for what might happen in this documentary. Marinette casually leans her head on his shoulder, and it feels so natural that for a second, Chat Noir really regrets that they can’t ever be more than friends, but both Hawkmoth and the fact that he’s already had to reject her once stand in the way of that. _You are so adorable,_ he thinks. _I wish I could tell you that without breaking your heart._

* * *

Tikki glances over at Plagg, who is curled up against her, seemingly asleep, but the tiniest glint of green tells her his eyes are still open. It genuinely means so much to her that he’s willing to sit through this TV show with her, even though he doesn’t understand why she likes it so much. “You really are my other half, Stinky Sock,” she whispers.

“Mrowww?” Plagg says sleepily, blinking slowly at her, and she realises that even if he wasn’t asleep yet, he’d nearly been. But he was clearly trying to keep his eyes open for her.

She smiles.

“Nothing, Stinky Sock. You can go to sleep if you want.”

“Mrrrroooowwwww” Plagg purrs. And even though she _knows_ his favourite napping place is Adrien’s pocket, he curls closer to her, nuzzling his head under her chin, and she melts. Because even if Plagg can be a cantankerous little beast, he’s as insistent as ever of reminding her that he’s _her_ cantankerous little beast - forever. And she loves him for it.

* * *

The clock strikes eleven, signalling only one hour left of Valentine’s Day, and Tikki pauses the show and curls up next to Plagg, drifting off to sleep herself. Downstairs, Nino and Alya share a warm, soft glance as on the TV, a young woman makes eye contact with a young man, and neither can bear to pull their eyes away. As sweeping strings highlight the moment, Adrien and Marinette glance at each other, then look away, Adrien thinking of red with black spots, and Marinette, for once, thinking of green eyes behind a black mask.


End file.
